Notes:
Takes place in July of 2001 which is a way of explaining the dial-up modem Camila uses. Girl is more angsty and more naked because it takes place in Brazil. Her blog is called CAMILA JAM. The official TMI film of all time. Camila is hot, lives internally, and is unlucky in love–every interlude, every man she fancies becomes some life-long love affair which no other human being has ever experienced. The men, it goes without saying, don’t see it that way. But her internal life, which is published on her blog, CAMILA JAM, writes a much better story than her real life recognizes.
The tone is set early in the film when a man angrily packs up his girlfriend’s stuff in boxes while she sits naked on a chair crying. We then get a rather physical fight as she makes no attempt to cover herself up–we’re not in an American multiplex anymore. As the film progresses, we will see every inch of Camila, she’ll vomit after a night of drinking, she’ll bleed, she’ll fall down some stairs (quite scary actually), we see every tattoo and every bruise, and she wants us to see inside her soul, which is easier said than done, especially in a movie. There are only so many ways to show a character typing on a keyboard–the clickety clack of the keys on a screen, voice over while she sits in front of a monitor. We see a combination of every way a filmmaker has tried to show computer work before and somehow it isn’t boring. Especially because Camila is just moments away from doing something ridiculous or dangerous or, worst case, she’ll continue writing in the nude, and who isn’t in favor of that?
Had this been a moderately attractive indie-girl from the US, there would have been no reason to watch. Chloe Sevigny or Zoe Deschanel, etc. It’s in a foreign language, the people look exotic, Brazil has a certain moral looseness, so we hang with it as if atching the natural habitat of an exotic creature we’ll never have the money to visit.